From Crisis to Control: How Albany’s CDTA Handles 10x More Calls with Enghouse

Albany, New York, is used to snow, but one snowstorm brought the city to a standstill. The Capital District Transportation Authority (CDTA), which operates public transit for the city and most of upstate New York, was in crisis. Buses continued to run, but panic-stricken commuters called CDTA to ask about schedules and route changes, and stranded drivers flooded the phone lines, begging for assistance.

The CDTA had the transportation resources to handle the storm, but its call center software was not up to the task.

“We were having a hard time answering those calls,” said Mary Palmatier, who worked as CDTA’s Telecommunications Administrator. “They were getting busy signals, and that made us realize we have to do something. We can’t do this again.”

It was a turning point for the organization, which oversees the region’s STAR paratransit service for people with disabilities and the FLEX on-demand transportation service, in addition to providing regular route bus service and shuttle systems. More than 600 people work at CDTA to deliver a transit system that serves more than 800,000 people who live and work in the region, transporting more than 55,000 customers each weekday. It was time to find a way to deliver a better service to those customers.

Aging infrastructure, modern demands

The CDTA had a call center with some unified communications, but were missing a dedicated contact center platform that integrated its telephony systems with call management and recording features. It was impossible to record and upload messages for commuters about service changes or updates, and many callers couldn’t connect with call center agents because they lacked a queueing system to handle high call volumes.

Even after graduating from the old three-digit extensions to hunt groups, the call capacity wasn't enough.

“Our basic hunt groups weren’t enough for the amount of calls that we were getting, especially on days that we had spikes with bad weather or other emergency situations where people needed transportation,” Palmatier said.

CDTA needed a system that offered queueing so they could deliver information to people before speaking to an agent. They also needed reporting tools and analytics to track, evaluate, train, and schedule agents.

Finding a forward-thinking provider

After consulting with a long-time vendor and booking several demos, the CDTA found a platform from Enghouse Interactive—then called Zeacom—that offered all of the features on the checklist and promised a simple migration. It wasn’t long before they deployed the platform, Touchpoint, at their contact center. 

Touchpoint offered the queueing system, call recording, and reporting tools the organization wanted. It also provided excellent support, dispatching a team of technicians to the organization’s Albany call center to deploy the software and instructors to train CDTA staff on the new platform.

Enghouse support extended well beyond deployment. The company provided ongoing assistance, including administrator training at its California facilities and yearly check-ins to ensure that the company’s call center solution continued to meet the CDTA’s needs.

At the time, infrequent platform upgrades made it harder to scale systems as companies grew. It was essential for the CDTA to partner with a forward-thinking provider that could innovate and meet capacity as the organization’s needs grew at a time when limited flexibility required long-term planning and purchasing more equipment and services than needed. 

Enghouse Systems was that partner, offering unmatched guidance and superior technical assistance.

They continued to deliver tools that streamlined call center management while building the CDTA’s capacity to handle the influx of information requests in addition to STAR paratransit and FLEX bookings.

Evolving to incorporate advanced features and integrations

In the years since CDTA’s initial Enghouse adoption, the company has evolved their approach to include rich features and functionalities.

Touchpoint now integrates seamlessly with Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams, which has improved internal communication and enhanced the agent experience. Agents can see whether colleagues are present and available in real time, facilitating better communication and collaboration. Agents also can listen to their most recent calls, confirm any details they might have missed, and take corrective action.

Other features include advanced call queueing and monitoring features, custom thresholds, and timers that can alert call center administrators when the center doesn’t meet SLAs and KPIs. It offers managers great flexibility.

“If one department manager wants to know when there’s more than one call, they can. If another one doesn’t want a notification until there are more than 10 calls, they can set that up. I love the customizable situations,” Palmatier said.

Administrators can search for any user, monitor queues, and even see what calls are on hold. They can reconfigure queues, manage overflows, and assign callers to agents with the appropriate skillset based on customers’ needs instead of their place in line. Intelligent routing features take CDTA customers to the answers they need, including details about route changes and booking confirmations—no more busy signals.

Despite these features, Touchpoint is only one part of the equation. Providing excellent service requires excellent coaching, and Enghouse QMS (Quality Management Suite) offers managers more tools for that. QMS complements Touchpoint with the ability to record and monitor customer interactions, including calls, emails, and wait times, for immediate use or later retrieval. CDTA contact center administrators can then review detailed interactions and logs to confirm that agents are meeting their targets, greeting customers in a friendly manner, and ending calls appropriately.

They can also score agents on call quality and use that score as a training tool. Managers can show agents how and where they falter and where they excel, and coach them to improve their performance and customer support skills. Upskilling agents leads to faster resolution times, increased contact center capacity, and improved customer satisfaction.

Buses and shuttles continue to run through the capital region, and Palmatier estimates call volumes in their contact center have grown by 10X since they first partnered with Enghouse. Even with the increased demand, contact center staffing levels have barely budged, and they haven’t missed a beat.

Empowering administrators with unmatched control and support

Enghouse Systems Touchpoint and QMS give CDTA contact center administrators tremendous control over back-end systems, allowing them to make changes on the fly without calling in engineers. They can monitor and restart services on the Enghouse server, alter settings, write IVR flows, customize announcements, and configure queues without writing code or authoring complex scripts.

“They have some of the friendliest people,” Palmatier said. “They want to help. If you call, they’re available. If I email, they respond quickly. They work with me to make sure that any issues we’re having get resolved.”

Many contact center solutions, especially those sold as a service, restrict these capacities to the vendor, limiting how much customers can tweak parameters and adjust their processes. Enghouse Systems gives administrators more control and offers timely support along with robust remote training to ensure the call center runs smoothly.

Adapting to smarter, more seamless service

There have been other snowstorms since CDTA's Enghouse adoption, but they can always handle every call that comes their way. With Enghouse’s continued support, CDTA has elevated call center operations and empowered agents and administrators to meet rising demands with greater efficiency.

“Enghouse has really helped us improve all of the call center agents’ capabilities over time, even though call volume has increased so much,” Palmatier said.

In Touchpoint and QMS, CDTA has the tools to route customers to the right resources, accelerating response times and expanding capacity—all while maintaining high service standards and controlling costs. This transformation positions CDTA to better serve its growing community, keeping pace with the evolving needs of transit users.